Week in Review–December 16th, 2012

The Week in Review is a collection of both all the goodness I’ve written during the past week around the internet, as well as a small pile of links I found interesting – generally endurance sports related. I’ve often wondered what to do with all of the coolness that people write, and while I share a lot of it on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus, this is a better forum for sending it on to y’all. Most times these different streams don’t overlap, so be on the lookout at all these places for good stuff!

So with that, let’s get into the action!

DCRainmaker.com posts this past week:

Here’s all the goodness that ended up on the main page of DCRainmaker.com this week.

The Queue posts:

The Queue is a place where I post quick galleries of products that have just started the review cycle. Here’s more from the onslaught of new products that have come in lately (tons more planned over the next few weeks). At the moment, these don’t show up in the main RSS feed since they are just quick galleries. You can however subscribe specifically to The Queue RSS feed here (mostly to just use it as a notification mechanism).

2) How to ride cobbles: Given my current location, I need to get up to speed on this action. Because at present, the cobbles are not my BFF.

3)Looking for ski gadgets? Never even knew half of these crazy things existed. A little robot that pulls you up a ski slope? Nuts.

4) Nike adds new fitness startup accelerator program: Will be interesting to see what comes of this. Oddly enough, they talk about open SDK’s, API, and the sort – yet Nike+ as a platform is the most closed platform on earth. It makes the walled gardens of Apple look like Swiss cheese. (via Julien R.)

6) Suunto adds new GPS pod, doesn’t do ANT+: This is somewhat strange for a few reasons. First, who buys separate fitness GPS pods in new watches these days anyway? Evidence I receive from lots of you daily in the form of comments suggestions most of you hate them. Ignoring that though, if they had at least made it ANT+ other devices could have potentially taken advantage of it down the line. The ANT+ GPS device profile has been in a bit of perpetual beta waiting for a company to simply ask for it and push it out, Suunto would have made a great push company. Sigh…so much good done recently on going towards ANT+ away from the proprietary Suunto ANT, only to misdirect. (Yes, they could have done both, which would have solved old device and new device issues). That said, it’s physically cool looking.

8) Crazy Zip Line tied to a cliff and the back of a boat video: Ignoring the fact that some of the folks in the video are probably incredibly annoying in real life, the video itself is really darn cool. It almost makes me want to tie a zipline onto a boat and jump off a cliff also. Then again, maybe not.

13)Into the Mind trailer: Some pretty wicked special effects shots in there for this adventure/ski movie. Though, very little clarity on what the movie is actually about. The article explains it a bit more though.

Sports Technology Software/Firmware Updates This Week:

Each week I quickly highlight some of the new firmware, app, software and website service updates that I see go out. If you’re a sports technology company and release an update – shoot me a quick note (just one liners is perfect, or Tweet it at me) and I’ll make mention of it here. If I don’t know about it, I won’t be able to post about it. Sound good?

The coast to coast is touted as the "World Champs of Multisport" and not triathlon. It's cool she's coming to do it though. The 2 day version she'll compete in has an overnight stop where all support teams are given as much as they can drink of the sponsor's product.

It's a bucket lister for sure!

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The Coast to Coast does have a one day option, that is what is labeled as the "World Multisport Championships". Pippa is supposedly doing the two day, although I'll believe it when I see her at sign in. 140km of road riding, 36km of running (33km of which is the most rugged mountain running you can imagine) and 67 of grade 2 river kayaking. The winner of the one day will do it in around 11-12 hours, the slowest in about 17. It's a pretty epic event, wish me luck :)

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One of my developer friend I forwarded this to is very intrigued by the program and may apply. It would be neat to follow the story and get more details on the selection process, and the actual 3 months accelerator program itself.

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5 Easy Steps To The Site

You probably stumbled upon here looking for a review of a sports gadget. If you’re trying to decide which unit to buy – check out my in-depth reviews section. Some reviews are over 60 pages long when printed out, with hundreds of photos! I aim to leave no stone unturned.

It turns our I’ve written a fair bit of stuff over the past few years – and after it disappears from my front page, a lot of it never really sees the light of day again without Google’ing skillz. Or a photographic memory…which I don’t have. I’ve taken a look back and found stuff that…continues to find a trickle of readers via web searches or forum links.

I travel a fair bit, both for work and for fun. Here’s a bunch of random trip reports and daily trip-logs that I’ve put together and posted. I’ve sorted it all by world geography, in an attempt to make it easy to figure out where I’ve been.